Pyjamas In Bohemian Red
by TheVulpineHero1
Summary: New start, new pyjamas. A collection of unconnected Touhou shortfics, done largely for practice. Characters, genres and pairings will vary by piece, although all pieces will be T rated or below.
1. 1: Diary

"Do you see the sun, Patchouli Knowledge? I, the Scarlet Devil, have conquered her."

A tiny vampire, back straight and proud, wrapped in her finest dress and carrying a brand new parasol. There had to be a certain grandeur about a new possession, she maintained – some pomp, and more than a little circumstance. The sun may well have been Remilia Scarlet's greatest enemy, but it seemed like a quiet life was next on the list.

The witch half-smiles, a waning sliver of a crescent moon. It seems that her job will be easy, today; all that is required is ritual, and ritual is as easy to her as breath. "Of course, Remi. How does it go again? That little fairy's tale you're so fond of."

"Once upon a time, my dear Patchy, there were vampires," Remilia replies, whirling to face her friend sheltered under the great doorway of the mansion. (The sun is the enemy of more than vampires). "They were as fierce as wolves, as strong as oni, as fast as tengu. When they walked, the earth trembled at their footsteps. When they flew–"

"'The wind shivered as it felt the cut of their wings', yes. A legend that lasted a thousand years hasn't changed in the last three, I see. I have a cup of black tea waiting for me in the library, so perhaps we could skip a passage or two."

The vampire pouts; her wings droop, and she is a child again. "It's a new parasol, Patchy. A new parasol! The fruit of mankind's ingenuity, stolen and re-purposed to serve the children of the night. We're showing the sun just who rules around here. There has to be some _ceremony_. It has to _know_ it's been beat."

"Then perhaps you should shout louder. I very much doubt the sun can hear from such a distance," Patchouli remarks. "Begin at the part where everything else is jealous. We can at least get by without another sermon on the superiority of vampires."

"Fine. But only because I am magnanimous, and you are my friend. Anyway, eventually, the rest of the world became sick of how amazing vampires are, and one by one the forces of nature declared themselves our enemy to balance things out. First we were rejected by water, which refused to reflect us, and forbade us passage."

"Which has proven a fine excuse to avoid taking a bath when you don't want to, hm?"

This earns her a scowl. "Patchouli, I am the mistress of this house, and if I don't want to take a bath, then no force in all Gensokyo will compel me."

"And I, Remilia, am the One-Week Witch, and if I ever smell you coming before I can see you, I'll call down such a deluge as to sweep the mansion straight into the lake."

"And all your precious books with it!"

The witch smiles, and touches a finger to the brim of her cap. "Koakuma and I just finished waterproofing the mundane stacks just last week. As for the magical stacks... I'd be more worried about the lake than the books, if they were to be swept away."

Too late, she notices the glint in Remilia's eyes. There was much to be said for avoiding the wrath of vampires. Whatever overblown claims about her power Remilia might make, it could not be denied she was strong beyond the dreams of common youkai, possessed of a sharp mind, and full of a child's mischief.

"Oho. So, I take it something _interesting_ would happen if we were to take a few tomes and toss them into the water? An incident, perhaps, that might bring that lazy red-white miko running to entertain us for a few hours?" the vampire asks, her smile curving into a malicious grin.

"You won't find it quite that easy. They're trapped, to keep out mice and book thieves."

With the slightest movement of her wings, Remilia takes to the air, flying slowly and deliberately toward the mansion. There's power in the gesture, certainly, almost as much as there is petulance. "Even better. I could use a little light exercise before the real festivities begin."

Patchouli sighs, although she can't deny that a little excitement would be pleasant. With only a modest cough, she begins the day's incantations.

* * *

**A/N:** Before we go further, I have to tell you the story of a story. A long time ago, in the FFVII fandom, I wrote a story called Pyjamas and Ironic Harmonies. The way it worked was people gave me prompts and then I did the prompts, which allowed me to crowdsource creativity and simply focus on the process of actually writing.

Now, Pyjamas was years ago; in the meantime, I've fallen out of practice, and become a different person entirely. So, as a way to get myself back in the groove, I thought I'd re-examine those prompts under a different light, and see how I react to them. Since I'm somewhat more prone to tackling things in a more esoteric way now, I'll add a little note whenever the link between the work and the prompt isn't immediately obvious, explaining where my thought processes were. Oh, and before I forget: **unless noted, there is no continuity between pieces.**

In this one, for example, I was thinking more about the actual quality of youkai diaries. Considering how long-lived most youkai are, and the fact that Gensokyo is fairly closed up, there must be a lot of repetitive entries. I wanted to look at two different ways of dealing with that – either embellishing everyday achievements/accomplishments, or wilfully subverting established rituals to make them a bit more interesting. I didn't quite get all that I wanted done with this piece, but it's the first of hopefully many in what is unabashedly a vanity project, so I can forgive myself.


	2. 2: Tongue Twister

There were many words that could describe Marisa Kirisame, and very few of them were complimentary. On this occasion, though, the most objectively truthful thing to call her was 'drunk'.

Of course, like all objectively truthful statements, some qualifiers were required. Unlike the magician herself, drunkenness wasn't quite black and white. There were all sorts of shades of inebriation to get through before you hit full boozehound, and Marisa was going through them at quite a clip. With a cup of sake in her hand and a grin on her face, she'd already reached the point where it was more trouble to stop giggling than to start, and where even the tiniest thought can spark deep, if nonsensical, episodes of self-reflection.

"Hey, Sanae," the magician said, slouching into a more comfortable position on the veranda of the Hakurei shrine. "Stick out your tongue, will ya?"

Sanae looked across at Marisa, one of her few entirely human friends, and assumed a truly beatific smile. "Are you an idiot?"

Marisa frowned. She'd weighed the chances of resistance at about fifty-fifty. On one hand, sticking your tongue out just because somebody asked you to was probably a bad idea. On the other hand, Sanae was famously lacking in common sense. (Marisa hadn't reckoned on the fact that Sanae still retained certain other senses, notably one of self-preservation).

Elsewhere, the party raged on. Youkai get-togethers had turned into a regular occurrence at the shrine as of late, although Reimu had been quite strict on the matter of tributes. The rule, enforced by spell card duels where necessary, was that anybody wishing to join the fun had to bring a dish for the party and a dish for miko – with the caveat that the dish for the miko had better be _good_. The general consensus was that this was an overwhelmingly positive development, since it meant that Reimu had begrudgingly allowed parties to become a once-a-fortnight deal instead of once a season, which meant more opportunities for feuds, quarrels, socialising, and the all-important wacky hi-jinks that seemed to make Gensokyo function nowadays.

Reimu herself was more ambivalent about matters. Although it was true that she ate better under the new regime, she was ill-disposed for the kind of antics that sometimes took place. Moreover, parties were effort to set up and advertise, and while she could often farm that effort out to Marisa, Aya or Suika, occasionally she had to venture forth with invitations herself. There was also the fact that some of the 'gifts' brought by the partygoers were a little suspect; Yukari, in particular, was prone to showing up out of nowhere with interesting morsels from the outside world. Reimu had eventually gotten over the popping candy, but she still held a grudge about the strange, deliriously sour sweets that had hurt her tongue.

After a second of inebriated pause, Marisa renewed her attack. "It ain't gonna be anything bad. I promise! I just wanna see it."

"You know that the preachy underworld judge is at this party, don't you? Wouldn't it be smart to quit lying?" Sanae asked, continuing to smile as if she was talking to a child. "Don't you think, Reimu?"

Reimu, mere feet away on a cushion of her own, made no answer. She had already had perhaps a few cups more than she ought. Normally, she was lazy and impartial; the introduction of alcohol made her harder than ever to rouse, and even less likely to care. It took her a few seconds to come down from whatever strange, peaceful place her mind had flown to and look Sanae in the eye.

"Why not?" she asked. "Just do it, and then she'll quit whining."

Marisa beamed, having ignored Reimu's passing insult entirely in favour of capitalising on the support. "See? Hostess' rules. Get your tongue out."

Sanae's smile faltered; her knuckles whitened around her cup. "Don't say it like that, Marisa. And before I show _anybody_ my tongue, I want to know why you're so interested."

This, apparently, was the moment the magician had been waiting for, because she answered with undisguised glee. "Okay, so, I was thinkin'. You're shacked up with those two goddesses, right? The snake lady and the frog girl. Snakes and frogs have both got weird tongues, don't they? So, obviously, since you're their third, you'll have a weird tongue too. I wanna see it."

Sanae's cup sailed gracefully through the air and would have bonked Marisa perfectly in the centre of the forehead, had years of danmaku practice not prompted her to dodge. It hit the floor with a hollow, wooden clunk.

"I am not _shacked up_ with Lady Kanako and Lady Suwako," Sanae hissed, rising to her feet. The sounds of the party quieted, and gave way to a wave of interested whispers. Bets were being taken; sides were being picked.

Reimu's eye flickered open. "Sit down, Sanae."

The priestess of the wind turned. "She's besmirching the honour of the Moriya Shrine. If I let her get away with it, everybody else will think–"

The miko's response came swiftly. In the blink of an eye she was on her feet, gohei in hand. Sanae hadn't gotten the next word out before it hit her square in the forehead, with enough force to make her knees fold under her and send her tumbling to the ground. "If you want to fight, do it after the party," Reimu told her, in a voice that was much calmer and more even than it had any right to be. "If I let one fight break out, there'll never be an end to them. Pick your battles."

Sanae scowled, and bit her tongue. Privately, she thought that it was quite suspicious how the 'impartial' maiden of the Hakurei Shrine had taken sides with her best friend, but experience had taught her that Reimu was not somebody to be trifled with on a whim. On the other side of the table, she saw Marisa hold a hand to her face in apology.

"Sorry about that. I just wanted to see if your tongue had any special powers. If I meant to insult the goddesses, I'd do it to their faces, y'know?" she said. If it was a lie, it was convincing. The youkai patrons, satisfied (and a little disappointed) that the incident had been resolved before it went further, gradually decided to go back to their own squabbles.

"...Pour me another cup, then," Sanae said, sighing. "Just for the record, there's nothing special about my tongue. Apart from being able to roll it."

"Aw. That's no fun. Hey, you think Chen's got a cat's tongue?"

Sanae shrugged. "I wouldn't bother her about it. Yukari's shikigami may be a fox, but she's also the biggest mother hen I've ever seen."

"Ah, I'm sure it'd be fine. What about Mystia? She's probably got a sparrow's tongue, right?"

"She'll probably think you're going to make her tongue-cut if you go asking about it. Maybe try seeing Yuyuko? They used to say that "death and life are in the power of the tongue", back in the outside world."

"I don't wanna get myself killed quite yet, though." Marisa replied, and pulled the brim of her hat down a little. "Who else can we grab?"

The night wore on, and the sake kept flowing. By the end of the evening, neither girl remembered why they'd come so close to fighting, or even that they'd come so close at all. As the youkai of Gensokyo had observed, there was nothing like drinking and feasting for patching over old grievances.

Or, as Marisa found when she awoke to the unhappy victims of her tongue-based shenanigans, for creating new ones.

* * *

**A/N:** This one's fairly basic in regards to where I put the prompt; however, I kind of meandered away in the middle to discuss party economics and flesh out the world a little in my own head, before devolving into tongue-based punnery. One of the biggest challenges with writing touhou stories, so far as I can see, is how far to mimic the nonsense dialogue the characters tend to have in canon, as well as how to have characters address each other. (I've still yet to decide how to handle Marisa's 'da ze' verbal tic; it might be okay to just tag it on the end of the English dialogue, since I don't particularly think I'd pull off the drawl that some parts of the fan community give her instead.) Overall, I'm fairly pleased with this one, although I think I could have resolved it better.

Before I forget, however, I'd like to assure you that I don't own any of these characters or settings.


	3. Two-and-a-Half: Maid and Reflections

The devil's maid sat upon the long grass, a picnic basket on her knee; the lakeside viewing party that her mistress had insisted upon was going swimmingly. The air was crisp, and there was enough shade that even the sunlight adverse residents of the Scarlet Devil Mansion – mostly Patchouli – could be happy, or at least better than miserable. Soon, she thought, black tea would be called for and western-style sandwiches would be parcelled out, in accordance with her lady's wishes.

"Sakuya? Come. Forget your duties for a while," Remilia called, turning from the lake; she had spread her wings to ensure she cut an impressive figure from afar, although her grip on her parasol was as tight as ever. "Even if our head maid takes a break, we have enough maids that our household will continue to flourish. Take pride in it."

"Yes, my lady," Sakuya replied, although she had her reservations about the how true that was. Certainly, they had many maids, but the quality of the housekeeping never improved no matter how many they hired.

"Fufufu. As I expected, a lake viewing is just as good as a cherry blossom viewing. Better, in fact, because we could hold one every day if we wanted. With this lake under our control, there's no way we'll lose out to the ghost princess and her baked potato gardener."

Sakura nodded. Although the rarity of cherry blossoms were what made them special, a maid had to learn the value of beauty in mundane life. That said, Youmu was not as appetising as a baked potato. "I think you mean 'half-baked', my lady. But I didn't realise you were so passionate about the lake."

"Well, of course. It has other fantastic properties, too! Patchy studied it a while ago. The waters from this lake can extend your life by a few years, although it only works on youkai," Remilia went on. Of course, most youkai lived so long that a few extra years meant nothing at all. "And, this is one of the only places in all Gensokyo where my reflection can be seen."

Sakuya found her interest piqued. The Scarlet Devil Mansion wasn't entirely devoid of mirrors, since they could be useful for summoning rituals, scrying and getting one's uniform correct. However, there were very few of them for such a big house. Patchouli kept hers under lock and key, because undesirable things could use them to gain entry, and the two mistresses of the house had no use for them at all.

"You want to see it, don't you?" Remilia asked. Her mouth curled into a tight smile, like a child playing a trick. "Go on. Gaze into the lake."

Sakuya realised that, despite being able to see the lake anytime they pleased, her mistress had picked a windless day to do so; the surface of the water was as smooth as polished glass. It may have been coincidence, but sometimes random chance was the hand of fate. But no matter how hard she looked, she could not see her mistress.

"All I see is the mansion, my lady."

"Vampires don't possess a reflection as you would think of them. We don't just get one whenever we look in a mirror. We have to _work_ for it, and make the world reflect us by force. Although you may not see my image in the lake, what you see certainly reflects me."

Her lecture over, she turned and began to walk towards the trees, where Patchouli had begun poring over her books while Koakuma put entirely too much sugar in her black tea. After a second, almost as if forgetting something, she turned.

"Although, if you look hard enough," the vampire said, the very picture of nonchalance, "you will notice that you, too, are reflected in that lake."

* * *

**A/N**: This wasn't one of the original prompts for old Pyjamas, but in fact a practice piece I did before starting PJs Red in order to prep myself. I was mainly trying to get a decent idea of how Remilia would act (spoilers: I decided on hammy and arrogant), and trying to look at the idea of reflections. It has quite a few similarities to Diary, the first piece of this collection, which shows I was probably thinking along the same tracks. (I also wanted to try writing a Sakuya who still had trace elements of the ditziness she sometimes shows in canon. I wasn't best sure how to do it, so she starts honestly comparing Youmu to a baked potato.) It's quite a ramshackle piece, but I wrote it, so I might as well put it in as a bonus of sorts.


	4. 3: Margin Of Error I

Kamishirasawa Keine took a long look around her classroom. Although, today, it wasn't _actually_ her classroom. One of the other teachers had been bedridden with illness for some time, and although work had been set, the class had begun to struggle in her absence. Clearly, special measures had been needed.

Still, Keine was more used to children of a younger age. Many of the students she was dealing with had already worked out the major truths of life in the village, and Gensokyo at large. They knew that crops had to be prepared, and timber felled; they knew youkai prowled the night, that even the teachers were expected to grab a rake or a hoe and spend their evenings watching the perimeter. There would be some among them, yes, with the aptitude for learning, but not a single child amongst them would have the time to take their studies further; they would all be labourers or farmers.

In the face of that cynicism, there wasn't much an ordinary teacher could do. But for Keine, who had many, many years left to devote to education, it was simply a challenge. The objective was not, per se, to teach children – at least beyond the basics they would need to know for village life. It was to demonstrate the joys that education could bring, to ensure that when it became possible to teach further, the passion was there. To that end, she'd prepared something rather special for today's lesson.

"I've decided to change topics for today," she announced, and a murmur raced through the class. Some were excited, others disappointed. Everybody knew that Ms. Kamishirasawa was a history nut, and history wasn't any use to them.

"Long ago, before this village was founded," she began, standing up, "there was a great battle fought near here. However, there was no written record of this battle – not even I, or Hieda no Akyuu, have access to the vast majority of the details."

The children listened, although not in earnest. Classes with Keine were seen as a mixed bag; on one hand, the punishment for missed homework was inevitable and painful, but on the other, she had a pleasant voice and was usually more fair-tempered than the rest of the teachers. Sometimes her voice worked against her, and lulled some of the children to sleep.

"How, then, do we know what happened? The truth is that we don't. However, we _do _possess a means to find out. That's what we'll be doing in today's class – uncovering a lost chapter of history," Keine said, walking to the door of the classroom. "You all will be my assistants. And I have three other assistants who I'd like to introduce you to."

She opened the door; as if following a practised routine, a woman walked in. She was dangerously lean, with hair the colour of ash and eyes that always seemed to be looking at something very far away; she slouched when she walked, and kept her hands buried in her pockets.

"This is my friend Fujiwara no Mokou, a... health nut who runs a yakitori stand. However, she's also what you might call one of nature's historians, with a strange habit of acquiring eyewitness accounts to events in ancient times."

"Had to build me up, didn't you?" Mokou sighed, and turned her gaze to the class. "Uh, listen. Don't get your expectations up, got it? I'm no good with kids."

The children looked at each other, as if deciding whether to acknowledge this fairly grandiose entrance. It was an open secret in the village that there a pale, hungry-looking woman living in the bamboo forest, and that Keine sometimes took a lunch to her when she wasn't occupied by classes. Nobody knew quite why it was a secret in the first place, but it seemed private, and nothing was more exciting than knowing something you felt you shouldn't.

"Don't listen to her. She's secretly very friendly," Keine said, slapping her friend on the back a touch harder than was entirely necessary. "Anyway, let's introduce our next assistant."

The door opened once more, and another woman walked in. She was slow and deliberate with her steps, strikingly well-dressed, with neat blonde hair that would have driven many of the village wives into jealousy. Much like Mokou, she didn't seem entirely comfortable in front of a class full of children.

"This is Alice Margatroid. You may have seen her at the village festivals. She's kindly agreed to put her work aside for a day in order to come in and help us with our lessons. Give her a big thank you, okay?"

"Ah... Yes," Alice murmured. Her pose became a little more rigid, and a subtle flush came to her cheeks as the class furnished her with the obligatory applause and thanks. She flicked her eyes to Mokou, who seemed darkly amused by her reception. "Can I consider our grievances cleared?"

"You put me through quite a lot during the Trial of Guts, y'know. If I don't get at least one favour per death, I'd be selling myself short."

Alice sighed, and nodded. The amounts of trouble Marisa landed her in sometimes had to be seen to be believed. It did, she supposed, get her out and about, which saved her from a fate like Patchouli's, but whether that was entirely desirable...

"Now, time for our third guest," Keine said, visibly less enthused than before. Her voice became low. "Mokou, I'm counting on you."

Mokou shrugged. "I know the drill. If in doubt, burn everything."

"Except the children."

"Right, right. I keep forgetting that part. Barbecued kids aren't good for business. Got it."

"Depends on the clientèle."

Alice's eyes widened. "Keine, did your hat just speak?"

As a witch devoted to breathing life into puppets, animated objects were of particular interest to Alice. There was also the fact that, though there were many strange things in Gensokyo that simply had to be accepted, the line had to be drawn somewhere. Hat shenanigans seemed a fine and arbitrary place to draw it.

Keine's hat, seizing the initiative at long last, launched itself from her head and began to scurry around the room. Keine looked down at it, stuck between fury and pure incredulity; it took quite some effort for her to resist the urge to crush the hat to a pancake in one quick stomp. Instead, she took a deep breath.

"That's quite enough. Please remember that you are a _guest_," she said.

The hat gave a disappointed moan and stopped scurrying, much to the disappointment of the children. It toppled over unceremoniously, revealing the tiny oni who'd been piloting it.

"I thought school was meant to be fun?" Suika asked, growing back to full size in a swirl of purple mist. Her bow was slightly askew, and her cheeks red with liquor; it was clear she had no intention of changing for anybody.

The class watched as Mokou and Alice visibly tensed. Mokou, in particular, fixed the oni with a glare that could have melted sand into glass. Suika responded with a dark grin; she didn't seem particularly worried about her every move being watched.

Keine grimaced. "...well. It is, but we tend to plan our fun so it's educational. Class, this is Miss Suika, our third assistant. As you can see, she's an oni – a very old and powerful type of youkai. She happened to be around the area at the time of the battle we were studying, and we'll be making use of her eyewitness accounts."

"So this is the current crop of humans, huh? I guess it's nice to meet you all," Suika said, and grinned. "I'm sure we'll get along very well in the future..."

* * *

**A/N**: I'll be splitting this one up, just because it has a lot of ideas for me to work with. Keine, Mokou, Alice and Suika are characters I rarely ever see interact in fanworks, and who I believe could have some very interesting ramifications. In the meantime, however, I'd like to move on to a different prompt so I can keep my enthusiasm high. I am, however, on holiday at the moment, so the next one may be in the pipeline for a little while as I acclimate to new surroundings and have fun times in general.

Interesting note: although it won't be relevant for a little while, Suika is actually my favourite touhou character. She's also one of the ones who suffers the most from lazy characterisation and poor world building, and consequently rarely has a starring role in fanbooks. As for me, I could write reams and reams of Suika stories, but I'd prefer to wait for a while before doing so in order to get my skills up to scratch.


	5. 4 Mutual Exclusivity

They said that youkai and humans could never live together, and they were wrong for all the right reasons. The truth was that youkai – the strong, the wise, the long-lived – needed humans. They needed to oppose, to define themselves against the dreams and lives of beings so much weaker than them. And they needed to feed, whether it was on flesh and marrow and blood, or on dreams and emotions and spirit. Even the weakest, most human-like youkai needed to feed.

Alice Margatroid looked into the eyes of her next meal, and allowed her mouth to flicker into a smile before she advanced. Tall, refined, and extremely composed, she often present a distant and intimidating figure to the humans who sought her out. At the moment, she was more primal, less reserved; she had removed the ribbon from around her neck, taken off her cape to give her arms more freedom. Her precious tome, however, was never far from her grasp.

She leaned forwards, and cupped her victim's cheek in her hand. For a moment, she simply luxuriated in the sensation. The flesh was warm, soft, yielding – so very different to the porcelain or clay of her dolls. Glimmering threads were wrapped around her victim's limbs, knotted too tightly for escape but just loosely enough for struggle. She'd chosen simple, efficient knots – single columns on the wrists tied off to the posters of her bed, a double column knot to bind the ankles together. Given the time or the inclination, she might have done something flashier as a favour to her 'guest', but not tonight.

As quickly as she had advanced, the puppeteer withdrew. That was the manner of her domination; for every step forward to touch or to taste, there was a step back to observe the effects. She had no urgency to bring things to the close, to hurry any experiment along.

Again, she drew closer. The rustle of cloth, able hands doing their job well. Clothes were being shed, and barriers broken. She drew her fingertips across bare, trembling arms, a smooth stomach, a pair of almost muscular thighs. All of a sudden, she felt… possessive. Jealous. None of this was hers, yet. It would be, but -–

"Hey, Alice. Would ya hurry it up a little? I'm not really into this bondage thing," Marisa said, looking Alice in the eye and wriggling in her bonds. Even stripped to her bra and bloomers, she hadn't even a hint of shame.

"Yes, well," Alice coughed. "We did your idea yesterday. It's my turn now. Didn't I tell you to be quiet when we started?"

"Still don't get why you're into it in the first place," the black-white magician said, leading forwards to steal a kiss. (She had never taken anything lawfully.) The ropes caught her just short. Alice traced the contours of her bottom lip with a finger.

"Because, Marisa. If there is one thing a puppeteer must have," she said, just before their lips met, "it is control."

* * *

**A/N: **This was basically just for fun; the idea is a take on youkai feeding on humans without physically eating them, and how a human's co-operation might facilitate that. On the other hand, it was probably flagrant BS and I did it for shiggles. (Note: under my wordcount and without this author's note, this piece clocks in at 500 words exactly.) Obviously the 'victim' was going to be Marisa, although I couldn't exactly imagine her being too overawed.

The big author's note filibuster for today is about pairings. I'm not quite as into shipping as I was long ago, although I still enjoy it. The Touhou series, however, is one that doesn't quite fit in with my usual style of ship. Usually, my method can be rendered like this:

1\. Pick a pairing I happen to like. This can be for an entirely arbitrary reason.  
2\. Write exhaustively about that pairing to the exclusion of all others.  
burnt out, abandon writing it.

The thing is, there are simply so many characters and so many appealing pairings in Touhou that even a mildly one-true-ship style person like myself can't take that approach. So, pairings will be sporadic, random, and frequently I'll be experimenting with just how such a relationship works. Quality will probably improve with the number of times a pairing is shown, and more often than not I'll probably talk about how I see that particular pairing in the AN for the piece. This one's gone on long enough, though, so my thoughts on MariAri (as well as Alice herself as a character) will have to wait.


End file.
